Alleged Mariposa Controller On Trial posted by Editor on Friday August 10 2012

The man believed to have run the massive Mariposa botnet is on trial in Slovenia, charged with masterminding an international cybercrime gang.

The 26 year old Matjaž Škorjanc, also known as Iserdo, was arrested as part of an international sting.

It is understood that various agencies including the FBI worked together in spain and Slovenia to track down Iserdo.

The Mariposa botnet at its height had infected some 12.7 million PCs, with around half of the fortune 1000 companies having systems compromised by the malware.

A group of the botnet operators where arrested in Spain in March 2010, however these people it is believed acquired the botnet code from another group as none of them possessed the programming skills necessary to develop the malware. The Mariposa code was sold in various versions with the basic releases priced at $500 and more advanced versions available for $1300. Advanced versions included customised features that would allow the theft of specific information such as Credit Card numbers and other useful information.

The malware was also found to have infected 3000 HTC Magic handsets shipped by mobile operator Vodafone Spain due to the malware making it on to a batch of memory cards included with the devices.

It is understood that Škorjanc’s former girlfriend Nuša ?oh is facing charges of conspiring to launder money.